


Sunset in Chelbourne

by Junipher



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Materialism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-11-21 23:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11368074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Junipher/pseuds/Junipher
Summary: We can’t keep them out forever.





	Sunset in Chelbourne

We can’t keep them out forever.

There are more of them than there are of us. That’s always been true, but something’s changed. Something has Margaret Grieves bustling around her estate, taking her grandidierite and paraiba tourmaline and jadeite pendants out of their display cases, where she used to smile at their admirers with an edge of spite, and locking them up in a strongbox under her bed.

We still have teas where, perhaps, we drink their rent in an afternoon. We still drop offhand comments about how the pastries are much better in France or how glowing Amanda looks after sunbathing in Sicily. But when our eyes meet and our biscuits suddenly taste stale in our mouths, we’re thinking about France and Sicily for more than pastries and beaches.

I’m going to miss Chelbourne. I really will. I was just telling Francis so the other day, when we were sipping champagne in the shade of my patio, looking out over an impeccably landscaped garden. It really is a shame to leave just as the tulips are entering full bloom, splintering my attention throughout a riot of color—arranged a little too neatly, not quite like my niece’s drawings from six years ago.

I feel pleasantly buzzed. As I savor the sip soaking into my tongue, I ask him, “What do you think you’ll miss most about being here?” It’s never a bad time to be sentimental.

He glances over at me, with a bit of a twinkle in his blue, blue eyes. “The company.” He tips his glass toward me.

I grin back, as his answer soaks in with the champagne. I think of snooty Margaret—too good even for _us_ —smugly vegan Naomi, shallow Amanda, aloof Henry.

Honestly, I can barely stand any of them. I wonder if anyone can stand me; well, maybe Francis isn’t too bad. Maybe he feels the same. Occasionally, I think it was a mistake for us to break things off.

“And you?” he returns, sounding genuinely interested. He was always good at that. With most people—with myself—I can’t tell if it’s interest or filling the time.

The answer comes to me immediately, but I don’t voice it. _Buying anything that I think I want for one second. And having it feel right._  I have a dozen five-plus carat diamond necklaces that I’ll never wear, tucked away in a drawer that I won’t open until I need to add another box.

We’re not _selfish_ at Chelbourne—quite the opposite. We donate hundreds of thousands of dollars every year to Action Against Hunger, to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, to Save the Children. To buy the right to be holier-than-thou, we might even donate millions; Naomi, forty million to the Humane Society a few years back. No one’s one-upped that yet.

And if we forget occasionally, like we might forget to walk our dogs, no big deal.

Francis is still waiting for my answer. I’m not interested in arguing with him. I cast around and, noticing the yellow-orange tulip I have my eyes on, reply deliberately dreamily, “My garden, here. These flowers are the children of my love, sweat, and tears. I pulled them out of the dirt with my own two hands.”

Francis laughs freely. We both know—he takes it for granted—that I’d paid an exorbitant fee for the best to design my garden, and the going rate for the competent to do the work. My input was limited to mentioning that I like the color red and that azaleas are pretty. As requested, a dozen elegantly pink flowers bloom on the bushes near the marble statue of Artemis.

I don’t garden, of course. I don’t _do_ at Chelbourne. I buy and I use up, and I buy some more.

I think I came to Chelbourne for something other than what I have. A rest, from the nail-eating, paint-overturning, canvas-tearing difficulty of _creating_ what I’ve seen in my head where no one else can see, that morphed somewhere along the way, way back, into a lifestyle.

_Thank God for them_ , I think, and I might even believe it.

I’ll set up an easel when they manage to burn down one of our mansions—Margaret’s, most likely. There won’t be enough time to finish the painting, but I’ll set down in rough strokes the Victorian frame of the mansion; red and orange and yellow tongues of flame, eating inward and rearing outward; gray smoke, billowing upward in a dirty cloud.

But I have time until then. I’m working on portraits of us. I want to capture every shade, twist, and angle of feeling in our eyes. Resignation, angst, bargaining, anger, denial. Snobbery, sanctimony, detachment, vapidity, charm. I can start with Francis.


End file.
